I just bought my french girlfriend a Kobo Touch for Xmas, and we are failing to even register an account with Kobo. This was bought in France. Unless we are doing something very stupid (always a possibility), the create an account interface is faulty. This is what we see (the language on the screen is french, but I'm translating here):

1. Select between "with computer" or "wireless" or "use your FNAC account" (FNAC is the french store this was purchased from). We select "wireless" option.
2. It looks for, and seemingly successfully finds our wifi connection. It says it is downloading something.
3. It asks: Enter email address and password (x2); at this point the screen shows check boxes for "send me news", and "I agree to your conditions". If you check either of these, the keyboard on the screen blanks out, and you are left with no button to push to continue. Up until this point, the keyboard had a "search" key in its bottom righthand corner, but this has now disappeared.

I've tried repeating this procedure, but this time not checking either of the boxes under 3. above, and hitting the "search" key. At this point, it demands that you respond to the question "I agree to your conditions", but it only gives you one box to check, for the other question ("send me news").

So, at this point we are both thinking "should have bought the Kindle".

We have also tried searching for our account in case it really has been set up during all this flaffing about, but it seems that it hasn't.

Have used Kobo desktop and wifi to set my account on my Kobo Readers for new reader and after factory resets. Easier and faster to do this with Kobo desktop program synced to Kobo reader using a real keyboard to enter requested information. Just using Kobo wifi and on screen keyboard is a little slower but not hard. There have been times I had to log reader out of kobo account and back in to get it working after updating software. Each update might have a little different procedure and bugs to keep things interesting. All show stopping bugs are quickly fixed making kobo readers about good as others but not yet perfect.